


How to Forget Someone

by InfiniteLS



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:17:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfiniteLS/pseuds/InfiniteLS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And he wish he could tell Harry how he made flowers bloom inside the saddest parts of himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Forget Someone

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, so I posted this on tumblr a while back. 2 a.m. drabble but I would love to hear feedback. Also, it is based on a poem I found so creds to that person.

**Step 1:** _Take a long shower and scrub your skin raw until it becomes red and their touch has been washed off, their kisses and caresses spiraling down the drain._  
  
Louis barges into the bathroom, stumbling over to the shower and blindly fumbling for the faucet. He wrenches the shower on, setting the temperature to absolute scalding, and rips off the clothes of that retched boy that he had been wearing for approximately five days now. Quickly, he hops into the marble shower and hisses as the water assaults his dirty skin. He feels as if he is burning alive, and to be quite honest, it’s probably the sweetest thing he has felt over the course of five days now. The moments that have filled his waking hours before him were full of crying and blaming and hating and aching. They were filled with the worst things any human could ever experience: heartbreak and loneliness.  
  
Louis stands under the water with his red, puffy eyes closed and let’s his skin become tender and soft under the heat and the water. He tries not to remember how just a short week ago, he would do this exact action except there would be a pair of strong pale arms wrapping around him from behind, encasing him in their familiarity and protection. He also tries not to remember the gentleness in which they cleaned each other after a long exhausting day of interviews and concerts. How Harry would press into him slowly, lovingly, slotting himself and Louis together perfectly. How-  
  
Louis snaps his eyes open and the sizzling water suddenly feels cold. He can feel Harry’s touch everywhere, gripping his hips, kissing his neck, nudging his legs. Every part of him on his body was claimed and touched by Harry, and Louis has to get it off, has to forget so this deep bruising ache will leave his chest.  
  
Louis’s bloodshot eyes frantically dart around the shower until they land on their intended target. With one sweep of his hand, Louis grabs the bar of soap sitting daintily on one of the shelves in the shower. He turns the temperature of the water all the way up before frantically scrubbing at every inch of skin on his body. He rips the caresses off of his thighs and rubs the kisses off of his neck. He doesn’t stop until his whole body is tingling and resembling the shade of a raw sunburn.  
  
Placing the off-white bar of soap- which was really just a nub now- back where it had been resting, Louis steps fully under the heated spray and watches dully, his body suddenly complicit, as the last caress is washed down the drain.  
  
 **Step Two** : _Say their name over and over again until it becomes foreign and distorted in your mouth, so that all is left is a bitter taste. Wash it down with a glass of wine, or two, or three._  
  
It’s funny how just a name- a few syllables really- can bring about such strong emotions, whether they are of icy hate or intense passion. A name is just as powerful of a word as anything else is, maybe even more so as they can bring back memories that may break or build someone. Which is why Louis needs to forget his. Why he needs to obliterate how his lips curled so familiarly around the two poetic syllables.  
  
He makes the pact to himself as he is watching the nightly news that he would say _his_ for the last time at that moment.  
  
So he does.  
  
He whispers it, his tongue curling in delight and happiness at the name he had only screamed and cried at in his mind. His voice cracks, which he had expected fully. Days of crying do that to even the most vocal humans.  
  
Strawberries. That’s what Louis had decided Harry’s name had tasted like the first time he had spoken it in a curious voice on X-Factor. His eyes had blinked in surprise back then, his tongue running over his lips to make sure he didn’t have any leftover strawberry juice sticking to them from that morning’s breakfast.  
  
His eyes still widen in surprise, his tongue instinctively licks his lips to taste the sweetness. But there is bitterness to the taste this time, and Louis supposes the strawberries are slightly out of season because of the insistent kicking elephant in his chest that makes him unable to breathe properly after saying the name.  
  
The strawberry taste is still mostly sweet and mostly there, though, and that’s all that matters as Louis decides that it needs to go. It must go if he ever is going to have a chance at forgetting that damn boy. So Louis says it again and again and again. He adds in the nicknames after a few minutes because they taste like strawberries too if not more so because they were given with sugary affection. He spends one damn hour saying those god damn names until, at last, his tongue flinches and shrivels a bit at the flavor it is pulling from Louis’s lips. The strawberries have been replaced with a bitter herb. So bitter that it makes Louis’s whole face contort in a disgusted grimace and bile rise up in the back of his throat churning his mostly empty stomach.  
  
Louis concludes the night a small success after battling his queasy stomach and stands up on shaking legs. He drags himself into the kitchen to grab a glass of cheap wine to wash the sour taste out of his mouth, but as he takes a giant gulp, he sputters in surprise. With a weary, defeated sigh, he grips the whole bottle of strawberry wine and picks his way to his bedroom, muttering ‘of course’ under his breath.  
  
 **Step 3:** _Remove all the sheets and covers that were once entangled with their legs and embedded with their scent. Clean them. Rip them. Burn them. Buy new ones. Buy a new bed, one where the mattress has yet to conform  their figure outlining their curves perfectly and reminding you of all the sleepless nights spent having conversations with their mind and their body._  
  
It is late. 3 A.M. to be exact, and Louis is paralyzed in this broken, slightly drunken stupor, curled on his side amongst cool sheets and pillows that smell infuriatingly like Harry. Every inhale brings the onslaught of a clean boyish scent and something inside Louis breaks, and it is so common now that he lets out a slight sigh as more tears flow down his still damp cheeks. It isn’t fair, he thinks, that Harry gets to spend the night in a clean bed with no physical reminder of exactly what and more importantly who he left behind. Why should Louis be the only one punished for loving another?  
  
Harry’s beanie is irritating Louis’s scalp, and as he goes to adjust it, Louis becomes aware of the physical dip he can still feel of where Harry’s body had lain for 5 years. The mattress has conformed to his shape, and Louis feels small lying in the imprint of Harry’s long, lean body. If Louis closes his eyes he can almost feel the quiet snores of Harry exhaled as soft as a butterfly’s kiss on the back of his neck.  
  
His grief suddenly turns to anger as it has seemed to be doing frequently these past five- well six now- days, and Louis is shooting out of the king sized bed like the mattress was made of nails, tripping as the room spins around him slightly thanks to the effects of the liquor he has ingested over the past few hours. He regains his balance quickly, though, and lunges at the bed clawing and ripping and fighting and screaming, oh God is he screaming, and it is the loudest he has ever screamed in his life, and somewhere in the back of his mind that has not lost sanity, he knows he would be absolutely screwed if the neighbors ran in to find out what the screaming was about because he most definitely looks crazy. There isn’t a way for someone who has gone through this kind of pain to not look crazy.  
  
So Louis  curses and cries and punches and kicks until slowly, and painfully so, Louis stops his clawing and fighting and screaming as he runs out of breath, and his voice becomes wrecked, barely able to shout anything in even a whisper. But he is still a stick of dynamite, set to go off with the faintest of sparks. His feral cerulean eyes skitter around the room in quick nervous glances, but he isn’t really _there._ His thoughts are twirling and tumbling, colliding with each other and bringing white hot flashes that pound his brain into mush and bring him to his knees. He’s sweating and shaking as memory after memory springs upon him like predator hunting its prey. All he sees is Harry, Harry, Harry. The night they first bought the flat when they hadn’t even had furniture yet and slept in the room with sleeping bags for a bed. That was the night they made love for the first time in this flat and many ‘I love you’s’ were spoken softly into sweaty skin and mussed hair as if it were the greatest secret in the world. And for a time, their relationship was the greatest secret in the world back when they were a bit younger and too forthcoming as a band to be allowed to be openly gay. It was during those times that this very room in the flat became purposeful as it was one of the limited rooms where they could simply be themselves. Where 2 a.m. tears were dried with the promises of ‘someday’ and passionate kisses were dished out by the dozen.  
  
Louis grabs his head, gripping it so hard his knuckles turn white. Those were the good times even though they were suppressed in where they could be themselves. They were the good times because he knew now that not being able to have Harry as officially his wherever he went made him love and appreciate the curly haired boy even more. Not to say he didn’t cry of joy the day they were given the go ahead by their management team to come out, it’s just, somehow, the secrecy of their relationship made it a little more _his_ and only his. They had been so filled with passion and love for each other. Their conversations filled with promises of the stars.  
  
But then, one day, something changed as if a switch had been flipped. Their conversations became clipped and testy; often breaking out into an argument over what Louis now realizes was probably petty things. They still loved each other, but the passion was lost, making their colorful relationship fall dull and grey. Perhaps it was because of the ending of their band One Direction.  Extreme _normality_ was expected out of their relationship that just didn’t sit with them quite right. Maybe they thought by arguing and pushing the other away it would bring back the passion that had seemed to have died. It would make them realize how much they needed one another. Or maybe they were just two boneheaded males too stupid to see that the passion never really died- it was just buried under their fear of a regular life without adrenaline filled concerts and heart stopping crowds. Just buried under their fear of growing up and moving on.   
  
Louis had noticed the change. He wasn’t that stupid. He could feel them drifting even further every time he came home and found a quickly scrawled note that notified him Harry was ‘just out.’ Yes, even though Louis was a boneheaded male, he noticed, and he was determined to fix it. Which is why he went to visit his mother and get her intake before making the decision. And the decision he made was probably the reason what he found when he got home stung terribly so. He remembered finding and reading the long letter and the apology, so crisp and awkward, so majorly _Harry,_ that had caused the breath to leave him in one big whoosh. He remembered running to their bedroom and flinging open the closet to find Harry’s side completely cleared of clothing. He also remembered shuffling, dazed, to the kitchen and pulling out the bottle of vodka he had stored away not too long ago and drinking into oblivion.  
  
Louis lifts his head away from his hands and takes a long draw of air, in and out. A miniscule breeze is flowing from his open window and chills him a little as it cools the sweat on the t-shirt that once belonged to Harry. He had found it buried in his pile of clothing in a dresser once he had woken up from that first blank night along with some sweatpants and a beanie. Louis had wasted no time in putting them on and letting Harry’s scent wreath around him like a security blanket. It was all he had at the time. It’s all he has now.  
  
Louis stands up in slow motion before wiping his damp hands on the sweatpants and setting to work on the destruction he has caused. He is determined to remove the items, to remove the memories that smell like Harry and are of Harry’s shape. This will help him forget, after all, he reconciles. Just like how saying his name removed the strawberries (yeah right).  
  
He is emotionless as he piles the sheets in his arms before putting on some slippers and walking outside the flat to deposit the sheets at the curb. He repeats the action with the mattress and the pillows until nothing is left in his room except the bed frame, the nightstand, and the dresser. Louis makes a mental note to order a new mattress and some sheets online before opening up his linen closet and grabbing a blanket and a few pillows. From there he walks over to the living room and throws them on the floor just managing to get comfortable as the longing starts to set in once more, and he curls in on himself because when you realize you’re alone, oh my, you really are alone.  
  
 **Step 4: Start hating yourself because no matter what steps you take you can never forget them. You don’t even really want to.**  
  
It is morning now, or maybe afternoon, Louis isn’t really aware of the passage of time, just that it is light out, and the sun is kind of burning his eyes with its intensity. For a moment he feels annoyance because how can it shine so bright when his entire being is black? How dare it shine? How dare it burn his sore eyes that had already been abused by lack of sleep?  
  
But Louis just rolls over, and the brief emotion he felt is filled in with the tingling numbness. He’s not quite sure when it set in, but Louis decides he rather prefers it to the constant switching between anger and sadness. For one thing, it is a lot less random and secondly, it is a lot less painful. He still has thoughts, though, and surprisingly, despite his determination yesterday, they are thoughts of defeat because who did he think he was going around trying to forget that the best years- the best person- in his life never happened? It was a foolish idea to start with, and if Louis could feel anything besides this peculiar tingling, he would be feeling emotions of shame for himself. And hate. Oh most definitely hate.  
  
He would feel bubbling, boiling hate for himself because why in the hell didn’t he do something when he had the chance? Why did he have to run to his mother asking her if his decision was the right thing when he knew that it most definitely was? Why didn’t he shove Harry against the wall and spend a whole night rekindling their passion instead? He knew that it was still there, that it had never left. He could feel it pulsing through his veins like lava. Why did he have to be a stubborn arse about things and drive Harry further and further away from him in the first place? He wedged a gap in their relationship until it rivaled the Grand Canyon in width.  
  
Harry leaving him was his entire fault, he decides, and there it is, there’s the chilling hate finally breaking through the tingling. He can feel his muscles freeze and his skin tighten in it, and it locks him in place in that fetal position he holds on the floor, and Louis thinks to himself brutally that, for the first time, he wishes he were dead. He wishes it with his whole existence because he thinks that everyone will be better off without him. Harry certainly is. Harry never needed him. Nobody needs Louis Tomlinson. All he is is lonely and cold, terribly cold. He doesn’t even blame Harry for leaving him anymore.  
  
As Louis lies there, on that thin carpet with the sun warming his back, he accepts the fact that Harry won’t be coming back for Louis. He won’t burst through the door, and Louis won’t stand up and run to him shouting and crying how he’s sorry, he is immensely, inexplicably sorry, and he is immensely, inexplicably thankful for ever having the honor of loving Harry and let Harry know that he made flowers grow inside the saddest parts of himself. Louis will never feel those ivory arms winding around him like vines, rooting him to the moment like a steady anchor, whispering his acceptance to Louis’s frantic words and leaning down slowly to-  
  
Louis is startled out of his state by the sound of the phone ringing above his head, sitting on the coffee table a few feet away. Hesitantly he sits up and reaches for it, shaking his head trying to get rid of the dizziness that comes with sitting up entirely too fast, before pressing the call button and putting the silver phone to his ear silently thinking it was just his mom checking up on him since he most certainly hadn’t been answering her texts.   
  
“Louis?” A heart wrenchingly familiar voice questions quietly. Louis’ breath gets caught in his windpipe as his mind tries to catch up with time, and he utters a choking sound as a reply.  
  
“Louis are you okay?” the voice questions, an edge of franticness making itself evident and a part of Louis revels in the fact that Harry is worried about him even though the other part knows that’s just how Harry is. He cares about everyone.  
  
Louis gasps again because, dammit, there must be someone holding him in a chokehold because he simply cannot catch his breath, and he must sound like a lunatic wheezing into the phone while Harry is the melody of calm on the other line. But somehow, the chokehold loosens just a bit for him to pant out an, “I’m fine,”  
  
“Are you sure? Because you don’t sound like it,” Harry answers, still a bit frantic.  
  
Anger suddenly spikes through Louis like a shot of strong vodka,- here we go again with the mood swings, Louis thinks- and it snaps the chokehold in half with its power. “Of course I don’t sound like it, Harry!” he snaps. “My boyfriend of fucking 5 years left me six days ago.”  
  
Harry pauses and in his rage Louis hopes those words were enough to make him physically flinch. He wants to _ruin_ Harry. Punch and scream and kick at him until Harry is feeling the equal amount of pain Louis felt over the course of these dreadful days.   
  
He can hear Harry sigh,- a quick burst of air that reverberates through the microphone- and he can almost see him pinching the bridge of his nose wearily. “Louis, I didn’t call you to argue,” he informs him, his voice clipped and cool.   
  
“What did you call me for then?” Louis sniffs, taking on an indifferent tone. He can be a phenomenal actor when need be.  
  
“I accidently left my airplane necklace at our house, and I was wondering if you could mail it to me,”   
  
“Don’t you mean _my_ house,” Louis fumes. “And why can’t you come here and pick it up yourself?”  
  
“I-um,” Harry stammers, unable to come up with a coherent answer and making Louis see red. He forgets about the dull booming in his rotting heart, he forgets he’s been tingling with need for Harry for almost a week. All he wants to do is hurt back what hurt him.   
  
“I know why you don’t want to retrieve it! You’re a coward, Harry! You’re a fucking coward because you left! You left when we were going through a stupid rough patch in our relationship, and you didn’t even have to courage to tell me to my face that you were leaving. You snuck out while I was away like the coward you are!” Louis screams into the phone, his chest ripping open, for the whole world to see. He feels bare and naked in the truest form as another dam in him cracks.   
  
“Oh, I’m the coward, Louis?” Harry shouts back and for a moment, Louis is surprised. He thought for sure Harry would hang up and run, run like he had been doing. He never expected him to fight back and give Louis what he had been itching for. “I’m the coward for leaving a broken relationship? You didn’t even try to fix what you knew what was broken. And yeah, some of it is my fault because I didn’t do anything to fix it, but neither did you. So don’t go around calling me a coward when you’re just at fault here as I am. At least I had the courage to leave, Louis. I did more than you ever would have.”   
  
Louis’ crying now, but it is burning, hateful tears full of poison and hurt because of course Harry doesn’t know that fixing them is what he was out doing the day Harry left. “It would’ve taken more courage to stay, Harry, and you know it.”   
  
Harry falls silent on the other line and any other person would assume Harry had left out of hatred, but Louis has Harry mapped out like a constellation. He knows Harry is still there, so he waits, breaths coming in hiccups due to his spiteful crying.   
  
A few moments later, Harry finally replies. “We’re so broken, Lou. So utterly broken,” he sobs, muffled. Louis gasps, a hand flying to his chest as it flashes in white hot pain. All of the fight trickles out of him, leaving him feeling less like granite and more like glass.  
  
Delicately, he lowers himself to the ground until his back is flush with the sofa behind him.  “We could fix it. Couples go through rough patches.”   
  
“No we can’t, Lou.”  
  
“Yes we can!” Louis insists, gripping the phone with two hands. “Look Harry, you could drive home, back to _our_ home, and we can fix us. I don’t care what it takes, we c-,”   
  
“I’m at Michael’s,” Harry whispers into the phone interrupting Louis’ rant that had been growing more hopeful by each word.   
  
“You’re- what?” Louis questions, taken aback. Michael, he should’ve known. The person Harry had been partying with while Louis sat at home trying to figure out what went wrong.   
  
“I’m at Michael’s,” Harry says again, this time a little bit more firmly. “He’s a good friend and I’m okay. I’m happy.”  
  
The elephant is back, stomping Louis’ chest until he is positive his ribs must be splintered. He opens his mouth to reply with indifference, to brush it off as if it were nothing but all that comes out is a choked, “Why?”   
  
“Our passion died with One Direction, Louis, just as our youth did. Everyone expected us to settle down and get a couple of kids, but we just weren’t ready for the normalcy of real life, like most wild, young lovers,” Harry spoke gently, and Louis couldn’t tell if it was a facade or if it were meant to soothe Louis like a petulant child.   
  
Now Louis wants to scream. He wants to tell Harry all of the things he had imagined himself yelling at him if he had ever come back. But he doesn’t because he knows that tone Harry has, knows it well after years of living with him. It is the tone of a made up, firm mind. Harry is happy, and Harry is not coming back to Louis. Ever.   
  
“I love you,” Louis blurts out, before snapping his mouth shut. He clenches his eyes to stop the flood of tears that had started pouring out even though he knows it will not help much.   
  
“I know,” Harry sighs, and that’s just not enough for Louis. He wants to hear him say it back, wants to have those as the last words Harry says to him instead of good-bye.  
  
“No, say it back. I want you to say it back,” Louis pleads desperately, and he knows he sounds pathetic which was opposite of what he wanted to be during this whole conversation.   
  
“I can’t,”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“Because then I’d be lying. Good-bye, Louis,” Harry states simply and then hangs up with a soft click.  
  
Louis doesn’t move for a long time. He doesn’t move even when his muscles start having spasms. His eyes are staring, unseeing, at a small bag sitting atop of the coffee table a mere foot away. It’s the bag that holds the engagement ring with a little ‘Hi’ carved into it that he was going to give Harry six days ago on the anniversary of when they first met.

Whimpering, Louis clenches his eyes shut for the hundredth time that day as, for a split second, everything he had made progress on relapses all at once. Harry’s scent floats into his nostrils with one inhale, and his mouth salivates at the taste of strawberries in high summer that invades his taste buds. Goosebumps form up and down his bare arms as he feels the caresses he had worked so hard to peel off become indented into him once more. Louis just exhales quietly. He should’ve known everything would flood back, especially after a conversation with Harry. After all, Louis has never really been an expert on how to forget someone. Especially a boy who held his twisted heart from the moment he broke into that dimpled smile.   
  



End file.
